mr. ackerman. great question. ed to yield five minutes to the chair of the subcommittee on middle east and south asia. mr. shavit for five minutes. >> thank you petraeus secretary, have a number of questions. some of them have already been talked about to some degree, but clearly we all want democracy, we won the people of egypt to improve their conditions and freedoms. our overriding concern is that what we all want is going to end up with the folks that we've come and i don't think that the egyptians themselves, the vast majority want to be in control and that is muslim brotherhood or islamic jihad or whatever terminology that one wants to use. could you comment -- they said a lot of things and i think they are trying to portray themselves as more moderate now and could you talk a little about the sharia law and what they said and what you think the position is with respect to egypt if they would gain control? >> i think there's a lot of speculation else to what the buckles and objectives are, and i think i would

mr. ackerman of new york. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from new york is recognized for 3 1/2 minutes. mr. ackerman: thank you, madam speaker. i'm opposed to this bill for one simple reason. it's not a smart thing to do. it recklessly jeopardizes the security and safety of the people of new york city and it does so for no reason. this is a national security issue. it would be irresponsible and delay the vital security improvements to the perimeter of the u.n. campus in the city that the state department wants to undertake and has the resources. why do this? overwhelm a radical wild-eyed obsessions with taking a pound of flesh out of u.n. which at times deserves it and do so no matter what the cost to our national security. where's the common sense in calling back money that is going to be used for desperately needed long overdue security upgrades that we have the money for anyway? and have the responsibility to do anyway. where's the been fit to the taxpayer for -- benefit to the taxpayer for maintain

mr. ackerman, for three and a half minutes. >> thank you, madam chair.unlike its arab neighbors, lebanon had a democraticically-elected government that should have had a mandate to govern. but like all of its regional neighbors except for israel, lebanon has suffered from an unaccountable element of its society acting above and beyond the law. what was different in the lebanese case was that this unaccountable few didn't occupy or use the institutions of the state in order to coerce, in order to repress, in order to dominate their political opponents. instead, they just threatened them and then killed them. no one should forget that before the current crisis, before the insurrection of may 2008, before the presidential succession crisis and the lockout of parliament hezbollah and its iranian and syrian allies engaged in a campaign of assassinations against lebanese parliamentarians and journalists that began in be 2005 with the murder of former prime minister rafik hariri. long before the coup, hezbollah considered it outside to the reach of the governme